AS Martin Scorsese's new Eighties traders film, Wolf Of Wall Street hits cinemas, our writer takes a walking tour that brings the 'greed is good' years of New York's financial district back to life

"Welcome to Wall Street!" booms my fast-talking New Yorker guide into his mouthpiece microphone. "Where toxic assets and NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loans brought down the great financial institutions of the US."

I'm on a walking tour of one of the most famous banking districts on the planet, following in the footsteps of names that have transcended the money world including straight-talking former city mayor Michael Bloomberg, the seventh richest person in the US.

I'm thinking, however, of a fictional character as I gaze up at the glittering skyscrapers and have been fascinated by the racy, glamorous, sometimes criminal world of Wall Street since I was a teenager in the 1980s, watching the antics of fictional character Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas.

Next week, though, there'll be a new contender for most compelling silver screen city bad guy when Martin Scorsese's Wolf Of Wall Street hits cinemas. Leonardo DiCaprio plays real life fraudulent mega trader Jordan Belfort, who pulled off a $200m stock market scam in the 1990s with delicious dastardliness.

My tour guide today is Tom Comerford, a former Wall Street trader himself who talks ten to the dozen. He worked at Goldman Sachs for 10 years and was involved in putting together hundreds of deals.

Despite the wealth of modernist steel and glass towers, the streets have a rich history. Amid the Doric columns of Federal Hall, America's first president George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, while across the street you can still see pockmarks in the stone wall where an anticapitalist's bomb, hidden on a horse-drawn carriage, exploded in 1920.

As we stroll around the corner of Wall and Broad Street we crane our necks to take in the neo-classical beauty of the New York Stock Exchange with its pediment of white sculptured figures dominated by a robed Integrity, her arms outstretched with clenched fists (oh, the irony).

Beneath the New York Stock Exchange's whopping Stars and Stripes banner fluttering in the breeze, Tom explains that visitors can no longer watch the frenzied activity on the trading floor. Post 9/11 the area is heavily guarded and a no-go zone for all but those who work there.

"Right here," Tom explains, "at its height, 6,000 men frantically traded non-stop all day, wading through their screwed-up trading papers on the floor as they were too busy to put them in the bin. One day a guy had a heart attack and fell into the papers but the traders just walked over him and carried on buying and selling. That's Wall Street."

Everywhere you look, buildings bearing the names that dominated the news during the first months of the crash, pop up, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and AIG.

At number 60 Wall Street, among the fake palms and marble tiles of the Deutsche Bank public atrium (also the HQ of the Occupy Wall Street movement), Tom tells us about life on the floor. "It was an incredibly stressful environment as you are trading so much money.

One day a guy had a heart attack and fell into the papers but the traders just walked over him and carried on buying and selling. That's Wall Street.

Tom Comerford, tour guide

"One senior trader insisted his staff keep six cups of ice in front of him for him to chomp through the day. He would yell: 'I am a trading machine and I must be kept cool!'

You'd do anything to keep your job because you were earning a basic of $150,000 to $200,000 a year and your bonus would be 20 times your annual salary.

"Traders worked six or seven days a week. I know a trader who told me he went home a little early from the office one Saturday and his kids were terrified. They just weren't used to seeing him around the house.

"The atmosphere was crazy. When trading closed, people would be hyped up and wanting to gamble on anything. They'd gamble thousands on how many cheeseburgers a guy could eat in five minutes."

Tom's boss Andrew Luan, who set up the tour company The Wall Street Experience after quitting his job bond trading at Deutsche Bank in 2009, also had some fascinating anecdotes.

"Guys would usually spend their down time choosing which Porsche to buy," he laughed.

"When things started going wrong they began Googling guns, worried that there would be a backlash against traders .

"They would rush out when they had a spare minute and buy up loads of rolls of gold coins because there was suddenly a question mark over the dollar. Their desks would be covered in gold coin stacks, each stack was worth a quarter of a million dollars.

"These guys were professionals who got where they were by working their butts off through university. They worked long hours. There was a big difference between their honest world and Jordan Belfort's."

These days Wall Street is a quieter, calmer place and much of the trading is done elsewhere.

The tour ends and I head back to my suitably trader-ish accommodation, a swish 21st floor room at the Novotel Times Square overlooking the famous flashing electronic billboards and theatres of New York.

In the giant lobby bar-cum-restaurant I get talking to Evan Feldman who is also an ex-trader who quit post-2008. "The money's great, sure, but hell, there's no time to spend it," he tells me.

Well, almost none. If Leonardo DiCaprio's high-rolling portrayal of Jordan Belfort's cocaine-fuelled exploits on the yacht he bought from Coco Chanel is anything to go by, they did get an hour or two.

THE KNOWLEDGE

British Airways (0844 493 0787/ ba.com) offers four nights at the Novotel New York Times Square from £679pp (two sharing), room only. The price includes return flights from London Heathrow to JFK. Offer for selected departure dates in January and February.